RAW quote: restriction of freedom (1975)

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"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason -- or are manipulated into reasoning -- that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted.”

John Higgs, author of the terrific Timothy Leary biography I Have America Surrounded, wrote a side-by-side comparison of The Illuminatus Trilogy and Atlas Shrugged. Here are the first few items: Illuminatus! vs Atlas Shrugged

I never met Robert Anton Wilson, but after reading him closely for years, I like to think I know him pretty well. When I went to college in the 1970s, I encountered Illuminatus!, and it had a greater effect upon me than anything I learned in class. It’s impossible to minimize the impact the book […]

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To combat this, beyond much fine and fiery writing, RAW founded the Guns and Dope Party.
Its platform:

We advocate:
[1] guns for those who want them, no guns forced on those who don’t want them (pacfists, Quakers etc.)
[2] drugs for those who want them, no drugs forced on those who don’t want them (Christian Scientists etc.)
[3] an end to Tsarism and a return to constitutional democracy
[4] equal rights for ostriches.

which is more fully fleshed out in “Position Paper #5”:

Official motto:
“Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy,
don’t be afraid to make slurping sounds,
and don’t take crap from anybody”

First order of business on assuming office:
Fire 33% of the Congress [names selected at random] and replace them with full-grown adult ostritches, whose mysterious and awesome dignity will elevate the suidaen barbarity long established there.

“The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason — or are manipulated into reasoning”

Well this is just more tiresome right wing conspiracy theory clap trap. The assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK were not part of a secret grand government conspiracy. And conspiracy thinking is not actually “reasoning”. It’s reactionary and emotional, not thought.

Few results big enough to reach the public’s attention occur without people working together to make them happen. When those things are crimes, then “conspiracy” is the correct word.

There is not one “secret grand government conspiracy”, there are many conspiracies, both in and out of government, most effectively secret, and they often compete with one another, overlap and conflict. Because of the secrecy, one can seldom come to a firm conclusion about exactly what happened – which is one of the things that led RAW to “maybe logic”. His Illuminatus! trilogy is designed to adapt the readers’ minds to a state of radical uncertainty that allows a larger form of reasoning, one which does not depend on false certainty. The original quote is from a character in Illuminatus!, which is a work of fiction. Any particular thing that a character says in the book should not be read as the firm conviction of the authors.

In the particular case of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations, substantial evidence exists that the official stories are incorrect and incomplete. Much of that evidence points to conspiracies and attempts at suppression of witnesses, evidence and proper investigation.

The attempts to account for as much of the evidence as possible that you deride as “conspiracy theory” are usually not right-wing – certainly not in the case of RAW – the victims were, after all, politicians of the left, and the logical suspects likely disagreed with their political views. While these attempts to account for the evidence are often faulty, that does not mean that such attempts should not be made.

“Few results big enough to reach the public’s attention occur without people working together to make them happen. When those things are crimes, then “conspiracy” is the correct word.”

I have no idea what you’re talking about (and I doubt you do either). I guess you mean that because the assignation of Kennedy was big and a crime it therefore *must* have been a conspiracy. Which is of course false.

“There is not one “secret grand government conspiracy”, there are many conspiracies, both in and out of government, most effectively secret, and they often compete with one another, overlap and conflict.”

BS, you do not know any such thing. You have no proof for single or multiple conspiracies. There have been of course secret government operations some which were not legal but that isn’t what you mean.

“Because of the secrecy, one can seldom come to a firm conclusion about exactly what happened – which is one of the things that led RAW to “maybe logic”.”

His Illuminatus! trilogy is designed to adapt the readers’ minds to a state of radical uncertainty that allows a larger form of reasoning, one which does not depend on false certainty.

Yeah, that isn’t reasoning either. That’s just some bullshit Wilson made up so morons would buy his crap. There is no such thing as “maybe logic” or “larger form reasoning”. REAL reason also doesn’t depend on “false certainty” (Which is itself incoherent), real logic *delivers* certainty.

“In the particular case of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations, substantial evidence exists that the official stories are incorrect and incomplete.”

No there isn’t. Oh there is a bunch a BS written by other conspiracy theorists where they quote other CT’ers but that isn’t evidence.

“The attempts to account for as much of the evidence as possible that you deride as “conspiracy theory” are usually not right-wing”

The majority of paranoid conspiracy theories originate on the right. The John Birch society being ground zero for this crap.

“While these attempts to account for the evidence are often faulty”

The attempts to account for the evidence by non-morons is in fact quite sound. Just because *you* can’t figure it out doesn’t mean that others have not. And just because you want to believe false conspiracy theories doesn’t mean it’s worth the time of others.

“All this inspired Bob Shea and me to start work on the gigantic novel which finally emerged as the Illuminatus trilogy. We made the Discordians the Good Guys and the Illuminati the Bad Guys in a epic of convoluted treachery that satirizes all conspiracies of Left and Right.” — Wilson, Robert Anton. “Operation Mindfuck.” Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati. Berkeley, CA: And/Or, 1977. 54. Print.

“a epic of convoluted treachery that satirizes all conspiracies of Left and Right”

Yes, that is straight out of Alex Jones’ play book: “don’t believe the false right/left paradigm!” It is common to all conspiracy theories that they live in a parallel universe. They have to for the same reason UFO cultists do, their beliefs are irrational.

Unless you take it as fiction, that would be ok, but I don’t think most of his readers do. How can anyone today read “The Cosmic Trigger” as anything other than pseudoscientific BS? There is no science in it. Once you’ve read it you’ll be as misinformed as if you read Deepack Chopra today.

The only difference between Deepack and Anton is that Deepack markets to upper middle class housewives and Anton to pot smoking hipsters.

The paragraphs preceding the one you quoted may clarify what he meant by “all this”:

…Thornley discovered that Allan Chapman, of Texas, one of Garrison’s aides, believed the JFK assassination was the work of the Bavarian Illuminati. Of course, I had been an expert on that subject (I thought) for a number of years, and [prosecutor Jim] Garrison’s involvement in it encouraged me to enter the belief system that Garrison was a paranoid or a demagogue or both. There simply were no real Illuminati; it was all a rightwing fantasy-a sanitized version of the tired old Elders-of Zion mythology. Although the underground press was absolutely fundamentalist in its allegiance to the Garrison Revelations, it was also intensely gullible and eager to believe all manner of additional conspiracy theories, the weirder the better. Most Discordians, at this time, were contributors to underground newspapers all over the country. We began surfacing the Discordian Society, issuing position papers offering non-violent anarchist techniques to mutate our robot-society. …

… we planted numerous stories about the Discordian Society’s aeon-old war against the sinister Illuminati. We accused everybody of being in the Illuminati–Nixon, Johnson, William Buckley, Jr., ourselves, Martian invaders, all the conspiracy buffs, everybody.

We did not regard this as a hoax or prank in the ordinary sense. We still considered it guerrilla ontology.

My personal attitude was that if the New Left wanted to live in the particular tunnel-reality of the hard-core paranoid, they had an absolute right to that neurological choice. I saw Discordianism as the Cosmic Giggle Factor, introducing so many alternative paranoias that everybody could pick a favorite, if they were inclined that way. I also hoped that some less gullible souls, overwhelmed by this embarrassment of riches, might see through the whole paranoia game and decide to mutate to a wider, funnier, more hopeful reality-map. …

New exposes of the Illuminati began to appear everywhere, in journals ranging from the extreme Right to the ultra-Left. Some of this was definitely not coming from us Discordians. …

Other articles claimed the Illuminati definitely were a Jesuit conspiracy, a Zionist conspiracy, a bankers’ conspiracy, etc., and accused such worthies as FDR, J. Edgar Hoover, Lenin, Aleister Crowley, Jefferson and even Charlemagne of being members of it, whatever it was. All this inspired Bob Shea and me to start work on the gigantic novel which finally emerged as the Illuminatus trilogy. We made the Discordians the Good Guys and the Illuminati the Bad Guys in a epic of convoluted treachery that satirizes all conspiracies of Left and Right.

I do agree with Ambiguity & Glaser:
The almost reckless happiness of many who do seem to peer into the abyss of our likely futures can be disorienting. But, it’s helpful to remember, many visionaries who’ve turned out to be correct were optimists and enjoyed – or seemed to – an disproportionate measure of peace. Even in the face of shatteringly heart wrenching – and often prematurely fatal – personal lives, their vision seems to buoy and even sustain their creative labours.